News brings back nuclear memories

Date: 8/17/2017

I’m sure the threat of a nuclear strike from North Korea struck fear in many people, as did the response from President Donald Trump to unleash an attack “the likes of which nobody’s seen before.”

Now if you’re a young person this may be the first time you’ve actually encountered a discussion of using nuclear weapons, but if you’re a geezer like me, this is a case of déjà vu.

Let me explain. I was in grade school in the early 1960s and back then the threat of nuclear war was something far more common.  I remember how people were warned about discontinuing that old New England tradition of eating “sugar on snow” – maple syrup on fresh snow – because of the radioactive fallout that had been discovered in the atmosphere from nuclear bomb tests.

Of course, being a public school kid, we had drills to teach us what to do if the Russians dropped a bomb nearby.  I went to first and second grade at what was then the Greenaway School – now the Freedman School – in Sixteen Acres. We were told that in the case of an atomic attack we were to go into the hallways of the school, face the cinder block walls and put our hands behind our head, resting our elbows on the walls.

This was going to protect us. Really.

In some schools they taught “duck and cover,” which meant getting under your desks. Educational films showed how even covering your head with a newspaper could help with fallout.

Ah, the lies that were told to keep people from panicking.

There was a small industry in building and stocking “fallout shelters” in the backyards of residences so families could endure an attack, as well.

Now before you scoff at the probability of the Russians bombing Western Massachusetts, consider that Westover was an active Air Force base at the time, the home of the B-52, long-range bombers. Those bombers frequently carried nuclear weapons. My dad was a commander of one of them and he and his crew used to be placed on alert living in the “Mole Hole” – now the civilian air terminal building outside of the Air Reserve base. They were waiting for orders from Presidents Eisenhower and then Kennedy to bomb the Russians.

So understand the Soviets had us in their sights because we had an Air Force base with long-range bombers loaded with atomic bombs aimed at them.

This was the reality of my early childhood and the childhood of everyone else who lived here. Being a dopy kid, I just accepted it.

In 1962, my dad was transferred to Montgomery, AL, to attend Commanding Staff College at Maxwell Air Force Base. I was in the third grade. That October, the Cuban Missile Crisis took place – go ahead, look it up – and people were freaked out that less than 100 miles from the coast of the United States the Russians had nuclear missiles aimed at the US.

I distinctly remember how an errant weather balloon seen over the city sent a panic through people wondering if this was part of a missile attack.

Diplomacy between the Soviets and the Kennedy Administration managed to avert a war.  

Diplomacy also played a key role during the Reagan Administration in decreasing new tensions between this country and the Soviet Union.  The threat of nuclear war at that time was so much on people’s minds there were several films produced – “The Day After,” “Threads” and “When the Wind Blows” in the early to mid-1980s.  All of them predicted a very grim future for survivors of such a conflict.

Diplomacy can work and perhaps it could in this case as well. Sabre-rattling is often part of a diplomatic strategy, but my concern is the comments made by the president were not planned and nuanced, but ad lib and built as sound bites for the press.

This is not a sound bite issue.  

I’m hoping, naturally, that all of this is just bluster from the North Koreans and from the president. Time will tell.